This is a podcast of a half hour radio show on WHRW 90.5 FM, "Atheists at the Table". A panel of atheists and theists talk about their views on recent news items and age old issues. Listen, live, at whrwfm.org, on Wednesdays, 5:30-6:30 PM.

There were two articles that didn't make it into the show, but I thought important and interesting enough to put into my pile of news items.

The first one is "Faith Based Fudging," an op-ed revealing an unfortunate move by the new American president. Apparently, Obama has chosen not only to renege on a campaign promise, but to open an avenue through which the hoards of the Religious Right might trample on our Constitution.

President Obama said, on the campaign trail, that he would continue the faith-based funding put into action by former President Bush, but would put in place stricter safeguards to ensure tax-payer dollars did not go towards the funding of proselytizing.

Even Christians should be outraged by this! Baptists, do you want you money going to fund a Catholic missionary? I think not.

I have not seen nearly enough outcry against this, even as there was none when Bush first put it into action. What's going on, here, folks? 'Cause I haven't a clue.

The second article was an interesting look into a woman's rights movment in Malaysia. In action for the past 20 years, the movment is bolstered by supporters from 47 countries, hundreds of Muslim women, and the Koran as their guide. The oppression of these women is justified by the Koran and so, in a fight fire with fire sort of mentality, these women aim to find passages in the holy text to prove their equality with men.

I'll say that they're going to have a very tough time. I've read the Koran from cover to cover and there's nothing useful about equality between the sexes. All the mullahs have to do is pull out 2:282, to show a woman as worth half that of a man, or 4:98, to show a woman equal to a feeble man or a child, or 7:24, to show that man and woman are enemies.

The religion, Islam, has doomed these women as far as I can see. They will never be treated as women are in more progressive societies. For even in America, when pride and honor and religion are more powerful than the threat of the law, the women will be beaten or killed by husbands and fathers and brothers and uncles who's greatest devotion is to God and not to family or state.